SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Gbadebo Oloruntimilehin, who lives at No. 9, JMJ Quarters, Ajegunle, Lagos has been known to be an easy-going fellow, who loves football very much.

Well-spoken about by his peers and elders, he also makes friends easily, boys and girls, and likes to try out new things, electronic gadgets particularly.

But his love for football and his dreams of playing overseas might have been truncated as a consequence of the beating he allegedly got from a Corporal, Wale Omoseye of Tolu Police Station, Ajegunle, Lagos State. Trouble started brewing for Gbadebo when, sometime last year, he met a girl called Faith Akintoye and they became friends.

Initially, the friendship blossomed with the two young people always in each other’s company.The boy even bought her a handset, a Nokia 6288 at N8,000.00.

Then, suddenly, Faith’s mother did not want to see Gbadebo anywhere near her daughter and warned him to steer clear.

She is alleged to have threatened that if he persisted, she would leave him with a mark he would live with all his life.  

According to Gbadebo: “Due to the warning and the threat from Faith’s mother, I told her we had to end our friendship.

“Although we still met once in a while, usually at public functions, our relationship was over.
“It was obvious, however, that I still liked her and she felt the same way about me. But, there was nothing I could do.

“Continuing the relationship would have been stupid of me, particularly when Faith’s mother attempted to bathe me with acid.

“I was lucky to have run away, but not before some of the acid she threw at me had splashed on and burnt my hand.

“Two weeks after I was discharged from the hospital, I asked Faith to return the phone I gave her but she refused. So I planned to forcefully collect the phone from her.”

The boy who thought that he had cut all links to Faith with the retrieval of his phone had underestimated the depth of bitterness nursed against him by her mother.

Narrating his story to The Guardian on Tuesday, Gbadebo, who was obviously in severe pains, said: “I succeeded in collecting the phone from Faith.

“She told her mother, who  reported me to her friend, a police corporal, Wale Omoseye who, last Saturday, arrested me where I worked in Ajegunle.

“Without telling me anything, he began to beat me and I demanded to know what I did.”

Gbadebo said the Police Corporal brutalized him, flogged him, threw him against a wall twice then  “warned me to stay away from Faith.

Continuing, he said: “ I have been having sever pains on my back.

“ According to the doctor at Merit Medical Care, Tolu, my spinal cord seems to be affected and that is why I can’t walk properly.”

He added that he only walked with the aids of a  stick.

“The phone that the policeman said I stole was given to Faith by me, when she said she needed a phone. I still have the receipt to buttress my claim. Since then, I can’t walk, and the doctor has warned me that if care is not taken, I can be paralyzed.”   

According to Doyin, Gbadebo’s brother: “Faith’s mother went to the police to report that Debo stole her daughter’s phone.

“Instead of lodging a report properly, she took the matter to a friend of theirs, Corporal Omoseye, who took the matter in his own hands and brutalized my brother to the point that his life is in danger.”

Another of Gbadebo’s brother, Ayomikun, added, “I told my brother to follow him and not to resist arrest.
“He obeyed me and followed Corporal Omoseye but when I got to the station, I was surprised to see Gbadebo soaked in blood and in pains.

“When I demanded to know what he did, the policeman said he was a thief.

“I believe it was the policeman’s relationship with the woman that influenced him to beat my brother so badly without investigating.”

Efforts by The Guardian to talk to the girl or her mother failed.Her shop has remained locked for the past four days.

But in a telephone interview, the Divisional Police Officer said the matter was under investigation. He also said that if the boy was beaten by Corporal Omoseye, it might be because he was resisting arrest, adding however:  “it cannot be serious.”

The danger Gbadebo is facing is similar to  other incidents in Lagos such as the one of Thursday, April 15, 2010, in which a police officer in Shell Estate, Lekki, over-reacted and    shot a man, leaving him with injuries, for laughing.

The mindless shooting of 27-year-old Udeme Akwa-Jackobson, a construction worker, has left him bedridden since then.

In April 2010, Charles Okoroafor was reportedly shot in the head by the police in Ajegunle, following a raid on a viewing centre during a football match.

The next day, irate residents gathered at the Ajeromi Police Station to protest the killing; four more people were killed including Tunde Olute, allegedly shot in the head when the police opened fire on the protesters.

Three days after that incident, another   policeman on duty at a bank on the Marina, shot dead a bureau-de-change operator whom he alleged attempted to defraud an old woman.

On December 13 last year, policemen on patrol from Pako Police Post in Amukoko, a suburb of Lagos, allegedly shot and killed a 21-year-old youth, identified as Ismaila Sanni.

On Monday in Abuja, a policeman shot a pregnant woman dead and injured a taxi driver, which led to a violent protest during which a bank was set ablaze.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Feb 2 2011. Filed under Headlines, Nigerian Police, Raw Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry